ISSN: 1164-8147

DIALOGUE

Revue Internationale d'Arts et de Sciences Medjunarodni Casopis za Kulturu, Umetnost i Nauku International Journal for Arts and Sciences Internationale Zeitschrift fiir Kunst und Wissenschaft

VOLUME 6                                             PARIS,JUIN 1997                                                             No 22 & No 23

THE INTRINSIC CONNECTION BETWEEN ENDOGENOUS AND EXOGENOUS

FACTORS OF SOCIAL (DIS)INTEGRATION: A SKETCH OF THE YUGOSLAV CASE

Vera Vratusa-Zunjic

Department of Sociology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia

Part I (in No 22)

          Many recent journalistic and scientific attempts to better understand, if not to explain, the phenomena of the simultaneous process of integratioii in Western Europe and disintegration in Eastern Europe in geiieral, as well as the ethnically and religiously tinged civil war in former Vugoslavia in particular, are characterized by a mechanical separation between endogenous and exogenous factors. In order to interpret current developments, however, it is indispensable to analyze how these factors have interacted in the past and continue to do so in the present. We must keep in mind both the influences of internal social differentiation on the nature of inclusion in the international division of labor and power, and the effects of international socialpowerrelations onthechanges of suchrelations internally. Only such comprehensive historical and structural analy-sis can bring us nearer to the truth about the war in former Vugoslavia and away from the one-sided interpretation which has been dissemi-nated in the most povverful world media. The main finding of this paperisthatthebreakingupoi 'theSccond Vugoslaviaintodependent mini-states governed by local rulers belonging to majority ethnic/ confessional groups in their respective former Republics, is the result once againofthe alliance of domestic and foreign ruling classes in the old neocolonial "game" of redistributing spheres of influence.

The theoretico-methodological analytical framework and its application to the Yugoslav case

The main "agents" of social integration and disintc-gration processes in the contemporary world should not be sought exclusively either in cultural values endogenous to particular civilizations (as in Huntington, 1993a; 1993b), nor yet in the exogenous power relations between nation states (as in Ajami, Fouad, 1993), on the other. Rather, they should bc sought in the interaction between changing alliances of domestic and international social classes.[l] From such a research perspective, the social mechanisms of disintegration (antagonistic division of commanding and executing labor functions and unequal distri'bution of its socially produced results), on the one hand, and integration (contlnual social production and reproduction process of common material and spiritual values), on the other, are sirnultaneously visible 011 tbe local as well as 011 tbc global level. The historico-gcographic and cthnico-confessional concentration of comraanding and executive social roles in the local and international division of labor and resourccs, however, cæiuses conflicting class interests (\vhether in defending or in changing the existing social relations) to be formulated in terms of religious or ethnic status groups (Vratusa-Zunjic, Vera 1993b; 1994; 1995). When this theoretico-methodological rcsearch ap-proach is applied to the study of (dis)integration processes in thc two former Yugoslavias (it liolds true in the prcsent "third" Vugoslavia as well), it leads to the conclusion that the main "exogenous" factors of their breakup were and still arc the imperial ambitions of the-mutually competing ruling classes of Westcrn Catholic and Protestant, Eastern Orthodox and Asian Muslim powers, using the "cndogcnous" social, ethnic and religious differences of local population as the means for expanding their spheres of influencc in this geostrategically important region. Subservience to foreign power elitcs had left the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula in general, and of Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) in particular, with an inheritance of mutual mistrust and hate.[2] Mistrust and hate arc fostered by painful mcmories, periodically rc-acvualized, of killing inflicted on cach other in the service of, or in alliance with, foreign interests. Concerning thc "endogenous" factor, the first point that has to be kcpt in mind is the fact that all South Slav pcoples camc to this territory almost simultaneously. According to the oldcst written source, Dc Administrando

Part II (in No. 23)